Living Corpse
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Maybe she'd have to give up that as well: her only hope. But for the moment though she could still believe, that death was slowly approaching. She was still a child and it was still a universal truth that she would die. [Mayu]


**A/N:** Written for the WIXOSS bingo – the non-flash version, #156 - prompt: There's nothing beautiful about dying.

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 **Living Corpse**

Mayu knew she was going to die. And it was going to be an ugly death: a wasted shell that simply couldn't hold on anymore, that had held on already too long. She'd given up long ago. Why couldn't she have died then? A porcelain doll – a pretty doll back then, when people had still cared. When she'd been properly fed and watered and tended to like a garden rose who couldn't move from the stem but was still beautiful in its prime. But humans had a prime much later in life. A child of eight or nine could not even look that far ahead but after that she'd wilted, shut away from sun and rain and wind and left in that dark and dusty room.

She fattened first, her body swelling from disuse, then grew thin as a gnawing hunger grew in her stomach and devoured the fat, and then the wisps of muscle underneath. She was still attended to, but suddenly the level of care had dropped. There was only the one maid now, and the food was soup or gruel or porridge – easy to slurp with a straw but barely appetising. And her time in the bath with the salts and bubbles was taken away as well. She was sponged down every other day, and otherwise left in bed to her own devices.

If she could have walked around the room by herself, she would have worn the floor down with her pacing. But she could not. Her body had always been too weak for that, and her special chair, with wheels and levers and a joystick, was nowhere to be seen as well. She could get herself onto the floor sometimes. She was careful to do that just before the maid would come so she could be helped back. The maid was never pleased but at least she'd never been left on the floor to be trod on.

The bed however, now that she lay on it endlessly, was not as comfortable as it had once been. She got bed sores too, ugly red blotches on greyish skin. And without shampoo, and with the strength in her arms failing like her legs well before, her hair became a thin tangled black mass that made her itch terribly.

She complained to the maid every time – about the sheets, that were changed once a fortnight, about the mattress that was lumpy and gave her sores, about the sores themselves that hurt even when she didn't move at all, about her hair. 'Can't do anything about the sores,' the maid would say roughly. But sometimes she gave the sheets an extra wash, or brought a soft blanket. 'My kid's,' she said. And it would be gone a couple of days after. Maybe it was a sign that Mayu should ask more – but she was too uncomfortable, too wasted, too long in waiting for her death to see anything like curiosity and kindness. She only had to look down to see her body dying but still clinging to her soul. It was frustrating. It was ugly. She'd been almost happy before, pampered and pretty and wheeled out into the garden to see the sun or the rain or the stars…

That was before her own father gave up on her. Her mother had given up years before, the moment she'd been cut out of the womb. Now there was only the maid to make sure she didn't die from neglect – or maybe she did it out of the kindness in her heart and couldn't afford much more. She was a small and thin thing herself. She struggled to lift Mayu onto the bed but she kept her complaints mostly silent. They didn't talk much, Mayu and the maid. Maybe the maid was waiting for Mayu to die as well. Or maybe the sight of the living corpse was frightening to her. The reason didn't matter much. Death was supposed to have been a pretty, freeing, thing. That was years ago when she'd been like a pampered doll and she'd thought she'd die that way.

Now her body was already dead and her soul was just waiting its turn. Or maybe the angel had simply forgotten to come, and her body would decay into simply bone and still her soul would cling to them. Maybe she'd have to give up that as well: her only hope. For the moment though she could still believe, that death was slowly approaching. She was still a child and it was still a universal truth that she would die.


End file.
